A warm welcome back to all of our CPCAB friends at the start of a chilly 2018. We hope you have enjoyed your festive season, however you spent it, and are managing to avoid the many nasty bugs that are circulating this winter. Please stay safe and well!

We're doing well here at CPCAB Towers in spite of some staff illness, but there's a big hole in the team since we said goodbye to our dear Traci Postings last term. Traci joined us in 2006 and has truly made her mark on the organisation with her unique blend of experience, wisdom and an astonishing appetite for hard work. Plus a remarkable sense of humour! She has left us to take on an exciting new role, still in the area of counselling and psychotherapy; it offers her many new challenges which she is eagerly anticipating. Although we miss her dreadfully we won't lose touch with her completely as she will still be helping us with various projects, including our in-house external assessment filming programme.

Watch out for April's Update when we’ll tell you about the new members of our team, which will include Traci's replacement as Qualification Leader for Levels 2 and 3 as well as other staff to assist us as we go forward to, we hope, a bright future together. Best wishes to you all.

CPD Endorsement

Enhance your training with CPCAB's endorsement scheme. This is open to any organisation wanting recognition for a CPD programme or event which is counselling related.

The CPD activity can be anything from a half-day workshop up to 30 hours of contact time.

Please contact Heather at CPCAB if you wish to discuss CPD endorsement further and to request an application form.

A New Vision for Mental Health

Have you ever wondered what mental healthcare would look like if, knowing what we know today, it was redesigned from scratch?

A New Vision for Mental Health is a new website that seeks to answer this question by taking a critical, informed and constructive look at the current mental health system, the concepts on which it rests and its constituent parts.

It provides a resource for tutors and learners, with new items posted several times each week.

It explores ideas, insights and suggestions – from a wide range of individuals and organisations – that might, in time, lay the foundations for a new and quite different approach to mental healthcare.

Practise External Assessment films

Over the next few months we will be making available our back catalogue of External Assessment films. We will be publishing films that are no longer used as exam materials for the Level 2 Certificate in Counselling Skills or the Level 3 Certificate in Counselling Studies.

We recently released the first film from this selection, 'Smokescreen', which is available on Youtube and the CPCAB website. Please feel free to share it with colleagues and students as it could provide a useful learning resource.

Keep an eye on our Youtube channel as we'll be releasing more of these films regularly over the coming weeks.

Standardisation Training - Final Session of 2017-18

The last CPCAB standardisation training day will be held at the Birmingham Voluntary Service Council on Saturday 10th February, 9.30-4pm.

The key task of standardisation training is to arrive at a common standard of what is good enough in terms of tutors assessing and delivering the CPCAB qualifications, plus to share good practice, welcome new tutors and discuss changes, funding and new developments.

This training day is now fully booked but if you have any queries regarding it please contact Jackie.

CPCAB would like to draw your attention to the following:

NEW TUTORS – All new tutors MUST attend one of the standardisation training days.

ELSK-L2 & USM-L2 - Tutor/trainers teaching these qualifications will be standardised as part of the centre approval process. They do not need to attend standardisation training days.

ICSK-L2 – All new tutors teaching this qualification MUST attend a standardisation training day before or during their first delivery of the qualification but they do not need to attend again each subsequent year.

CSK-L2 and all qualifications at Level 3 and above:Centre's responsibility – Centres must send All new tutors and at least one experienced tutor MUST attend a standardisation training day every year and 'cascade' the training to the tutors not attendingTutor's responsibility – All new tutors must attend a training session. Experienced tutors are required to attend once every two years provided the training is 'cascaded' to them by their attending colleague in the intervening year. If the tutor is working solely at a centre they will be required to attend every year.

A charge of £50 will be made to a training centre for the non-attendance of a tutor who has booked a place and has not cancelled (a week before the training) or failed to attend on the day.

Jackie Rice, Centre Service Manager

CPCAB Counselling Research Award 2017

The CPCAB Counselling Research Award aims to highlight significant research, document it on video, and disseminate it online. It is awarded annually at the BACP research conference before being made into a film by the Counselling Channel.

The most recent Award went to University of Sussex doctoral student Tracey Fuller. Her project The Trust is the Work looks at how to gain the cooperation of young people who are undergoing counselling at school. It was conducted in several school projects run by Place2Be, the UK’s largest provider of school counselling services.

The film of Tracey's research has just been completed and you can watch a taster below.

New fees from September 2018

Please note that our fee structure, as is usual at this time of year, is currently under review. The new figures will come into force with effect from September 2018. At the time of publishing the final figures are not yet available; please check the fees section of the website for details, where they will be available from next month. A further reminder will be sent out in April's Update.

These fees apply to the UK only; for overseas charges please contact CPCAB.

How to Build a Student Portfolio

In our latest “how to” video we look at building a student portfolio. Heather, our Senior Counselling Professional, shows step-by-step what should be put in a portfolio and how content should be labelled and presented. We hope the video will be useful to tutors and students alike so please share it widely.

We are working on more videos like this so if you think of a similar subject that would benefit from a “how to” video please get in touch with our Video Production Manager, Steve Spraggon.

Humour

Our thanks go to Rupert Fawcett of the hilarious “Off the leash” site for his kind permission to use this drawing.